The Ornithologist

O Ornitólogo

Stranded along a sublime river fjord in northern Portugal, a hunky ornithologist is subjected to a series of brutal and erotic Stations-of-the-Cross-style tests, in the daring new film from provocative Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues.

With his daring new film, provocative
Portuguese auteur (and former ornithologist)
João Pedro Rodrigues creates one of
his most visually arresting films to date,
and perhaps his most personal. Set along
a sublime river fjord in northern Portugal,
The Ornithologist adapts the story of Saint
Anthony of Padua — also known as Saint
Anthony of Lisbon, a Portuguese Catholic
priest and canonized Franciscan friar who
is the patron saint of finding lost people and
things — as it enacts the fraught pilgrimage
of Fernando (played with physical intensity
by French actor Paul Hamy), a hunky
ornithologist whose search for the rare and
threatened black stork leads to an eventful
and suspenseful journey of encounter,
danger, and lust, on the path toward total
enlightenment.

After his concentrated bird surveying
causes his boat to capsize, the unconscious
Fernando is washed ashore and rescued
by two young, seemingly innocent female
Chinese pilgrims, who are lost on their way
to Santiago de Compostela. Thereafter,
the film bends genres and busts taboos as
Fernando is forced into extreme action
in order to survive a series of brutal,
Stations-of-the-Cross-style tests, his metamorphosis
observed all the while by the
eerily placid gaze of the birds above.

Evoking the art-historical iconography
of Saint Sebastian (courtesy Fra Angelico,
Bellini, Mantegna et al.), Rodrigues also
adopts (and radically transforms) tropes
and patterns from the western to create his
mythic land of fantasy.

A film in which several pilgrimages — religious,
cinematic, and erotic — intersect and
overlap, The Ornithologist boldly continues
the uncompromising path of a filmmaker
who consistently pushes the boundaries
of the socially acceptable in his quest for
artistic freedom.